The Yankees won 1-0 for the second time this season last night behind a season-best performance by Jaret Wright (6 IP, 4 H, 0 BB, 10 K–Wright’s first 10K outing since September 1998), but the big news of late has been the series of roster moves the team has made over the last several days. With another move expected today, the Yanks have added a pair of outfielders, demoted a pair of relievers, and bounced one of their starters to the bullpen.

After an outstanding first-half in Columbus (2.84 ERA, 0.97 WHIP, 4.87 K/BB in 14 starts), 29-year-old Kris Wilson was promoted on Wednesday, ultimately at the expense of 27-year-old Matt Smith. Smith has yet to allow a run in the major leagues, hurling 12 scoreless frames across three stints with the big club this year. Wilson pitched two perfect innings against Cleveland on Wednesday and was immediately given Shawn Chacon’s spot in the rotation.

Chacon had struggled mightily since being activated from the disabled list, posting a 10.34 ERA, 2.10 WHIP and walking almost twice as many as he’d struck out in four starts. Chacon’s first start off the DL wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t a disaster (5 IP, 6 H, 5 R, 3 ER, 2 HR, 3 BB, 2 K). Unfortunately, his next start was. Staked to a 9-2 lead after four innings against the lowly Washington Nationals in his next turn, Chacon was only able to get one more out, surrendering four runs in the fifth and getting the hook after having needed 100 pitches to get through 4 1/3 innings (incidentally, he was replaced by Matt Smith, who allowed both inherited runners to score before getting an inning-ending double play). Thanks to the contributions of T.J. Beam, Everyday Scott Proctor and, to everyone’s surprise, Mariano Rivera, the Yankees wound up losing that game 11-9 and Chacon officially took up residence in Joe Torre’s doghouse.

Skipped the next time through the rotation, Chacon turned in a Jaret-Wright-like effort (not the insult it sounds like) against the Marlins (5 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 1 HR, 1 BB, 0 K), then was skipped again only to get beaten about the head and neck by the Indians in his next turn, surrendering seven runs on three homers, three walks and three other hits in just an inning and a third. The Yankees went on to lose that game 19-1 thanks once again to Beam and Everyday Scotty Proctor, with Mike Myers lending a hand as well.

The way I see it, the removal of Chacon from the rotation is a classic case of Joe Torre prematurely losing trust in a pitcher in response to an embarrassing loss (or in this case, two, both of which were as much the bullpen’s doing as Chacon’s). Chacon began the season with a pair of rough starts and two more unpleasant relief appearances, but then ran off a string of four starts in which he allowed exactly one run in each, lasting a minimum of 6 1/3 innings in the first three. In the fourth he was removed with two outs in the fifth inning after being hit in the leg by a Mark Lortetta comebacker that eventually resulted in his DL stay. Even with those poor early season outings included, Chacon’s ERA following the comebacker game was 3.68.

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Last year, the Devil Rays hit the All-Star break at 28-61 (.315), then went 39-34 (.534) in the second half thanks in large part to the mid-season promotion of Jonny Gomes and a fantastic second half from Scott Kazmir. This year, the Rays will reach the break with a record at least ten games better than a year ago and are once again set up for a strong second half.

The Yankees last faced the Devil Rays in early May when nearly half of the D-Rays starting line-up was on the DL. The day after the Rays left New York, they activated shortstop Julio Lugo and third baseman Aubrey Huff. Huff struggled through May, but turned it on in June, hitting .359/.400/.543, bringing to mind the extra 100 points of OPS he added after the break last year, aiding the Ray’s strong second half showing. Lugo has followed a similar course this year (.349/.439/.604 in June after a dreadful May), though he was actually less productive in the second half last year.

A month later, the Rays added to Huff and Lugo by activating second baseman Jorge Cantu and center fielder Rocco Baldelli. Bringing Cantu back into the fold has allowed the Rays to finally bench Travis Lee (.201/.286/.296 this year) by moving Ty Wigginton, who previously started at third for Huff before moving to second for Cantu, to first base. Baldelli, meanwhile, has come back from a year and a half on the DL due to an ACL tear and Tommy John surgery and lit into American League pitching, hitting .330/.387/.567 (though his center field defense has been atrocious, if error-free).

Of course, none of those four players could be expected to keep up that level of production, and there’s a strong chance that Huff and Lugo, both of whom are in their walk years, could be traded. But a large part of the Rays’ improvement has simply been benching or other wise disposing of the players those four have replaced: Lee, Thomas Perez (.172/.200/.250), new Kansas City Royal Joey Gathright (.201/.305/.240), and the since released Sean Burroughs and Nick Green.

What’s more, activating those four aren’t the only improvements the Rays have made over the past two months. They’ve finally ended the Damon Hollins’ experiment in right field, replacing his all-or-nothing approach with the superior all-or-nothing approach of Russell Branyan (both have 10 homers, Hollins in 208 at-bats, Branyan in 114). More significantly, they finally cut bait on Toby Hall (.262/.298/.382 career and the Rays’ starting catcher since 2002), swapping him to the Dodgers for former Yankee prospect Dioner Navarro (5 for 14 with a double and three walks since switching team and .283/.367/.382 overall in his young major league career). In addition to already being a better hitter than Hall, Navarro is also eight and a half years younger.

The Navarro deal also saw the Rays swap out Mark Hendrickson (sweet mercy) for ex-Met Jae Weong Seo, which gives the Rays a starting pitcher with a higher ceiling who is also three years younger. The Seo-Hendrickson exchange is one of three changes the Rays have made to their rotation since we’ve last seen them, having also farmed out 25-year-old failed prospects Doug Waechter and Seth McClung for 24-year-old Jamie Shields and 28-year-old Tim Corcoran. The significance here isn’t the additions of Shields and Corcoran (no relation) so much as, once again, the removal of the players they’ve replaced, a pair of pitchers who couldn’t get their ERAs below 6.60.

Tonight the Rays send Seo to the mound to face Jaret Wright. Wright was lit up by the Mets in his last start, getting the hook after just 1 2/3 innings, just the second time all season he failed to make it through five full innings, the other being his first start all the way back on April 15. Seo, who had been demoted to the bullpen with the Dodgers, has made two appearances since coming over from L.A., the first a pair of scoreless relief innings in Florida, the second a Jaret-Wright-like five-inning outing against the Nationals.

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Bob Klapisch takes a look at Mike Pelfry and Phillip Hughes, two young pitchers with seemingly promising futures, today in the Bergan Record. Considering how Met and Yankee prospects tend to be over-hyped, the $64,000 question is: Will they be fo’ real or fugazi? The Metropolitans get their first taste of Pelfry this weekend while Yankee fans will have to wait until 2007 until they see Hughes in the BX.

Randy Johnson was in fine form last night. For the first two innings of the game, the sun was still shinning brightly over the third base side of the ballpark. It cast beautiful, long shadows for the pitchers as well as anyone on the right side of the infield. Johnson’s shadow looked like a blade of grass and it carried almost half-way to first base. It was an odd but memorable sight. The same can be said for Johnson, period. The Big Unit simply cruised through the first six innings–it was vintage stuff–before hitting the wall in the seventh. He continued to falter in the eighth but by then the Yanks had a big lead. Final score: Bombers 10, Indians 4. After the game, Johnson was candid with reporters. According to Tyler Kepner in the New York Times:

“Going deep in the game — I’m not going to be able to do that anymore,” Johnson said. “I kept them at bay for a while, and then all of a sudden my slider wasn’t as effective, and neither was my location. It’s just part of getting old. We all know that I’m really old.”

…”You look at Maddux and you look at Clemens, those guys and myself, we’re all in our early 40’s,” Johnson said. “We’re not going to go seven, eight, nine innings anymore. There’s going to be games where we do, and tonight I was trying to pick up the bullpen. But you can only do the smoke-and-mirrors thing so long out there against good-hitting teams.”

And more from Sam Borden in The Daily News:

“It went from (three) hits to seven and one run to four – who would be happy with that?” he said. “That’s just me. I could be content with that and say I pitched great, but the one thing I haven’t lost is my competitiveness.”

Again, Indians kicked the ball around more than somewhat. Miguel Cairo and Derek Jeter each had three hits; Jason Giambi hit a two-run dinger, and newcomer Aaron “Ralph Malph” Guiel–who was as earnest and genuine as any overachiever you’ve ever on the YES pre-game show–scored three runs.

Yanks head down to Tampa to play the surging D-Rays. Shawn Chacon will not get the start on Sunday–Kris Wilson will instead. The Post has a rumor that the Yanks are considering sending Chacon to Seattle in exchange for starting pitcher Joel Pineiro.

Left on the Cutting Room Floor

Johnny Damon used to puff the Budda Bless and Alex Rodriguez performs a mitzvah.

The Yankees look to split Cleveland with a split tonight following the match-up of lefties Randy Johnson and Cliff Lee. The Yankees took Lee deep three times at the Stadium in mid-June (Melky’s first career tater plus dingers by Alex and Bernie), but all three were solo shots as Lee allowed just two other hits and one walk over 6 2/3 to pick up an 8-4 win. Johnson did even better against the Tribe the night before, holding them to one run on four hits and no free passes before getting tossed for coming inside to since-departed Unit-killer Eduardo Perez in the top of the seventh. After looking sharp in that outing and the two that followed it, Johnson got roughed up in his last start against the Mets, though it’s worth noting that even in that ugly eight-run outing he only allowed one dinger and struck out seven in six innings. Lee, meanwhile, has been solid of late, posting a 3.09 ERA in June and winning his last five decisions, thanks in part to an average of 8 2/3 runs worth of support across his last six starts.

With Robinson Cano on the DL and Johnny Damon out tonight due to an abdominal strain, the Yankees would seem to be a better offensive team against lefties right now given these numbers against the wrong-handed:

Jeter: .378/.471/.568
Rodriguez: .288/.461/.727
Bernie: .329/.375/.494
Cairo: .324/.390/.459

But while facing a lefty makes two of the team’s best hitters better and their two biggest liabilities productive, it has the opposite effect on the rest of the line-up. Andy Phillips has surprisingly struggled against lefties this year, Jorge has a .407 OBP against them, but curiously loses his power when batting righthanded, Melky has also been a weaker hitter from the right side, the Yankees don’t have non-left-handed replacement for Damon (paging Kevin Thompson!), and their lone remaining lefty, Jason Giambi, is, of course, a lesser hitter against his own kind (though in Giambi’s case “lesser” means a .371 OBP and .500 SLG).

From time to time here at Bronx Banter, we talk about what kind of impact coaches have on a team, particularly the pitching and hitting coaches. I got to thinking about what a pitching coach brings to a team after running across a nice, long quote from the legendary pitching coach Johnny Sain in a 1973 Sports Illustrated article by Pat Jordan (“A Jouster with Windmills”):

“To become a pitching coach you have to start all over again. You have to get outside of yourself. You might have done things a certain way when you pitched but that doesn’t mean it will be natural to someone else. For example, I threw a lot of sliders and off-speed pitches because I wasn’t very fast. But that’s me. I could also pitch with only two days’ rest (he once pitched nine complete games in 29 days) whereas most pitchers need three and four, although I think they shouldn’t. And I never believed much in running pitchers to keep them in shape. I’ve always felt a lot of pitching coaches made a living out of running pitchers so they wouldn’t have to spend that same time teaching them how to pitch, something they were unsure of. It would be better to have those pitchers throw on the sidelines every day, than run. Things like this I learned on my own. I picked up everything by observation, which is the best teacher. Nothing came easy to me. I had to think things over and over more than guys with natural ability did. Maybe this has made it easier for me to get my ideas across to pitchers. It isn’t that I’m so smart, because I know I’m not very smart at all. I don’t know any answers. I don’t give pitchers answers. I try to stimulate their thinking, to present alternatives and let them choose. I remind them every day of things they already know but tend to forget. I repeat things a lot, partly for them but also for my own thinking, to make sure what I’m saying makes senes…I don’t make anyone like Johnny Sain. I want them to do what’s natural for them. I adjust to their style, both as pitchers and people. I find some common ground outside of baseball that’ll make it easier for us to communicate in general. I used to talk flying with Denny McClain all the time. Once you can communicate with a pitcher it’s easier to make him listen to you about pitching. You know him better, too. You know when to lay off him, when to minimize his tensions, and also when to inspire him. That’s why you’ve got to know him. Pitching coaches don’t change pitchers, we just stimulate their thinking. We teach their subconscious mind so that when they get on the mound and a situation arises it triggers an automatic physcial reaction that they might even be aware of.”

“Pitching coaches don’t change pitchers, we just stimuate their thinking.” I’d be curious to know how Ron Guidry feels about his first year as the Yankees’ pitching coach, and how his pitchers feel about him.

Joe Torre held a mid-season meeting prior to last night’s game and then enjoyed watching his team beat-up on the Indians, 11-3. Aaron Boone committed three errors for Cleveland, two in the Yankees’ pivotal eight-run fourth inning. Melky Cabrera led the charge with the first grand slam of his career. Mike Mussina performed well enough–his breaking ball was particularly sharp in the early going–though his right groin continues to bother him. Mussina pitched just six innings and hopes that the All-Star break will help him heal properly. Same goes for Johnny Damon, who had to leave the game in the third inning with a sore lower abdominal muscle. According to Torre, Damon first felt that something was not right during batting practice, and after a few innings, he was removed from the game. They should know more about the seriousness of the injury today, but it’s not a stretch to think that Damon will be rested this weekend in Tampa Bay.

The Bombers gained a game on Boston, who lost again to the Devil Rays.

The Yanks acquired Aaron Guiel, a left-handed hitting outfielder, on the cheap yesterday. While Boss George is behind his GM, Brian Cashman all the way, the Yanks have not geeked and pulled the trigger on any significant deals yet. Cashman tells Mike Lupica:

“Right now we’re not a playoff team. We’re just a playoff-contending team.”

…”We’ve had the black cloud so far, no question,” Cashman said. “But that black cloud isn’t going to be over Yankee Stadium the whole season. Eventually it’s going to move somewhere else.”

…”We’re trying to fix this, but we’re trying to fix it right,” Cashman said. “We’ve taken some big-time hits this season, and our team has responded with heart and character. This isn’t last season, when we had a lot of healthy guys underperforming and we were nine games out. This team is different. And I want to do my part to help them out, and honor the effort I’ve seen from them so far. I just don’t want to make a mistake.”

And here’s more from the Times:

“If you want to do something this early, you have to overpay,” Cashman said Wednesday. “I’m not looking to overpay. The only thing I’m looking to do is improve our club at fair value.

“So far, I have passed. We have a short-term goal of improving the team now, and a long-term goal of keeping the future intact. It’s a tightrope you walk every day. I’m very comfortable with the decision-making process and the fight that this club has shown.”

To be continued, for sure…

The Yankees got whooped last night, but while the Indians 19-1 victory was both impressive and disheartening, it was by no means historic. In fact, the Indians gave the Yankees and even worse beating less than two years ago, on the Bombers home turf no less. That game, the 22-0 score of which was historic, came just two games after the Yankees had scored nine runs in the ninth inning against the Blue Jays in Toronto. Last night’s pasting came just two games after the Yankees erased 4-0 second inning deficit with a 16-run outburst against the Mets. In both cases, the two outbursts cancel each other out.

If there’s anything to be learned here at all it’s that the pitchers involved (Javy Vazquez, Tanyon Sturtze, C.J. Nitkowski and Esteban Loaiza in 2004; Shawn Chacon, T.J. Beam, Mike Myers and Scott Proctor last night–Ron Villone and Kyle Farnsworth, the only pitchers in either game to emerge unscathed, allowed just two baserunners, both against Villone, in 3 2/3 innings last night and thus escape criticism here) should be treated with suspicion from here on out. Of course, Myers entered the game with a two-month scoreless streak (covering just 9 2/3 IP given his LOOGY role), so one could argue his rough outing was merely a bit of statistical correction. Still, Vazquez and Loaiza went on to play key roles in the disaster that was Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS, Nitkowski had just 7 2/3 innings left in his career, and Sturtze spent most of the next season plus sabotaging the Yankee bullpen from within.

The good news is that after being stymied by rookie Jeremy Sowers–the odd rookie who may actually be as good as he looked against the URPing Bombers–on Monday and embarrassed last night, the Yankees still have a chance to split their series at the Jake with two of their best pitchers lined up for the final two games. Tonight the man on the mound will be Mike Mussina, who pitched four no-hit innings in his last start only to have his no-no stopped short by a rain delay. Moose has allowed just one run on five hits in his last 11 innings while striking out ten. What’s more, he should be well rested after throwing just 53 pitches in that rain-shortened start. The only concern with Moose is the tight groin he experienced in that start, though all reports indicate that the injury is no longer bothering him. On the hill for the Tribe will be Paul Byrd, who held the Yankees to one run over seven innings three weeks ago in the Bronx only to lose 1-0 to Chien-Ming Wang and the Yankee bullpen (in that case Myers, Farnsworth and Rivera).

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The Yanks took last night off and enjoyed the finest fireworks Cleveland had to offer. 19-1 was the final. Gasp. Happy birthday, George.

Chacon and Wright have been brutal this year, but Joe Torre pines for another bat. At the midway point of the season, the Yanks are hanging-in, tied with the Blue Jays for second place in the AL East, four games behind the Red Sox. Let’s hope they can finish this week on a high note.

Former Yankee farmhand Jake Westbrook vs. Shawn Chacon tonight in George Steinbrenner’s home town. Course it’s George’s birthday today. The pitching match-up doesn’t favor the Yanks. Let’s hope Chacon muscles-up and has a good outing, while the bats bomb away.

I want fireworks, baby.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

There is something I’ve been meaning to share with you for a long time. When I was thirteen years old my parents had already been separated for a couple of years. My twin sister, younger brother and I lived with my mom during the week in a one-bedroom apartment in Croton, a suburb about an hour north of Manhattan. On the weekends, we visited my father in New York City. It was the fall of 1984. I was heavily into David Bowie and the Talking Heads, comic books and baseball and girls, not always in that order. “Ghostbusters” had come out that summer. My mom took a week-long vacation to visit her family in Belgium—my Ma is Belgian but she was actually raised in Zaire, in the Congo. That meant our father was going to come and stay with us in our mom’s apartment.

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After a rousing 16-run outburst against the Mets on Sunday night, the Yankee offense was ineffective again on Monday in Cleveland. Jason Giambi hooked a 3-2 breaking ball into the right field seats in the first inning against southpaw Jeremy Sowers for a two-run dinger and that was all the scoring the Yanks would do as they fell to the Tribe, 5-2. Generally speaking, if you haven’t heard of the pitcher before, chances are they’ve got a good shot at beating the Yanks. Chien-Ming Wang wasn’t his usual sharp self, but he wasn’t awful either. This was a night where he needed the bats to help him a little something and it just didn’t happen.

The third inning turned out to be pivotal. With one out, Johnny Damon doubled. Derek Jeter followed with a sharp single to center. The ball was hit so hard that Damon didn’t have a chance to score. Jeter promptly swiped second but Giambi went down on strikes. The Indians intentionally walked Alex Rodriguez and then Sowers struck out Bernie Williams to get out of trouble. It was a nice bit of pitching and Sowers showed that he has some poise. The Indians singled three straight times in the bottom of the inning, scoring a run in the process. But it was Victor Martinez’s double to left that hurt the most. Melky Cabrera looked overwhelmed attempting to field the ball–first he took a bad route to it, then misplayed the ball off the wall and lastly missed the cut-off man allowing the slow-footed Travis Hafner to score all the way from first base. Instead of keeping the go-ahead run from scoring–the Yanks trailed 3-2.

Things got worse for Cabrera who was robbed of base hits not once but twice by Aaron Boone. Really some fine work by Boone. Todd Hollandsworth made a couple of nice grabs in left field as well and his two-run homer sealed the win for Cleveland. The Bombers had a chance in the ninth. They got the tying run to the plate. With two men on and two out, Kevin Reese pinch-hit for Nick Green and faced Bob Wickman who fell behind 2-0. The next pitch, tailing away from the lefty was inexplicably called a strike. I am not lying to you when I say that it was possibly the worst strike call I can ever remember seeing. It wasn’t like it was close but Reese didn’t get the call. It was as if the home plate ump was on the take. It was an awful call. 2-1 is a lot different from 3-0, no? Reese grounded out to end the game and it is not like the Yanks can blame the loss on a bad call, but yo, in a critical spot it sure didn’t help matters any.

Yanks are still struggling offensively. Fortunately for the New Yorkers, the Red Sox ran into a buzzsaw named Kazmir as Boston’s lead remains four games.

Preseason playoff favorites, the Indians are now, one game shy of the season’s half-way point, 18 games out of first place in the AL Central, 15.5 games behind in the Wild Card race, and three games below .500. While simply matching their Pythagorean record would improve their record, and thus the above standings, by six games, the Indians, an organization overflowing with young talent, has decided to take a longer view of their future.

The result is that starter Jason Johnson, signed to a one-year deal this past winter but dragging the team down with a 5.96 ERA was released and top pitching prospect Jeremy Sowers was called up to fill his spot. Veteran first baseman Eduardo Perez, signed to platoon with Ben Broussard–and excellent strategy that resulted in a .303/.343/.636 line from Perez and, with Perez taking all of the at-bats against lefties, the 29-year-old Broussard’s best season–was flipped to Seattle for 20-year-old middle-infield prospect Asdrubal Cabrera, making room for perennial minor league masher and righty-hitting first baseman Ryan Garko on the Cleveland roster. Meanwhile, with both corner outfielders on the DL, the Tribe has called up Franklin Gutierrez, one of their top outfield prospects, and have been starting him in right field. The Indians have also returned veteran backup catcher Tim Laker to the minors in exchange for Kelly Shoppach, the 26-year-old catching prospect obtained from the Red Sox in the Coco Crisp deal. Shoppach has been receiving his fair share of starts behind the plate, while the Indians have been working star catcher Victor Martinez into their first-base picture in order to keep his bat in the line-up on “off” days.

These moves are at the most a couple of weeks old (Gutierrez for Casey Blake in right) and in some cases (Garko for Perez) happened just a couple days ago, so there’s little to say as of yet about how these players are panning out, though the Yankees will get a good look at one of the more compelling little Indians tonight when they face Sowers in what will be just his second major league start.

Sowers was drafted by the Indians out of Vanderbilt University in June 2004 and made his professional debut in 2005 working his way all the way from the single-A Caroline League to the triple-A International League in his first pro season. After a rough spring training with the big club this March, Sowers returned to triple-A, where he had made just one start the year before, and went 9-1 with a 1.39 ERA in 15 starts despite an unimpressive K:BB ratio of 1.86 that was due largely to a low strikeout rate. His major league debut came at home a week before Sunday against the Reds.

In that game, Sowers pitched well in four of his five innings, but was undone by a fourth inning in which a lead-off walk was plated by a Ken Griffey Jr. homer and an infield single also came around to score on a home run by Adam Dunn. The end result was an ugly 7.20 ERA and a 4-2 Indians’ loss, but one can hardly blame a rookie for giving up taters to Griffey and Dunn. Meanwhile, the walk was the only one he surrendered while throwing 61 percent of his pitches for strikes, striking out three Reds in his five innings of work.

The Yankees jumped all over Alay Soler on Sunday, but they could easily come down with a case of the URPs against the 23-year-old Sowers, who is a very highly touted prospect who gets by on guile, changing speeds and breaking pitches rather than heat and sheer physical ability.

Looking to keep pace with Sowers will be Chien-Ming Wang, who turned in a gem his last time out against the Braves, needing just 91 pitches through eight innings, while holding the Braves to two runs over that span. Wang has steadily improved as the season has worn on, posting a 4.80 ERA in April, a 4.28 ERA in May, a 3.19 overall ERA in June and a 2.39 ERA in his last five starts, each of which saw him pitch a minimum of seven innings.

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I caught some of “Melinda and Melinda,” a mediocre but not entirely unwatchable Woody Allen movie this morning. It came out a few years back. Will Ferrell is in it and isn’t especially effective because she’s just doing the Woody-Stand-In schtick. Since Woody won’t write wise-ass variations of his own comic persona virtually every actor who has ever played a protagonist in a Woody Allen movie ends up doing their immitation of Woody. Heck Mia Farrow was doing Woody towards the end of their run together. But anyhow, I got in the Woody frame of mind watching the movie.

Then, as I was going through some old papers, I found a xerox copy of something that my cousin Sammy wrote to her father in the late ’80s when she was an art history major at Brown. Sammy has always loved the Wood Man. She was the first person I ever watched “Annie Hall” with I think, and Sam used to watch “Purple Rose of Cairo” anytime she was sad and needed to cry. In many ways she’s right out of one of his movies–incredibly beautiful, very smart, and really funny. You know, Amanda Peet could be one of her friends. A goy physically but very New York even though she grew up in Boston. She loves being married into my father’s family because they’re Jewish, or as Sam likes to describe herself, Jew-“ish.”

My uncle Fred is a painter and he’s from the old school, meaning he’s got zero tolerance for the pretentions of art criticism. He went to Cooper Union in the mid-fifties and hung around the Cedar Bar when deKooing and Kline and abstract expressionaist painters were the bomb. And there was his daughter, knee-deep in eggheads up at Brown. So she sent the following to her old man and he had it tacked up in his studio for years. It amused me so much that I must have copied it at some point. I found it up at my mom’s house last year. Funny the things you keep.

At the top of the page in captial letters:

YOUR $20,000 PAY FOR ME TO LEARN PHRASES LIKE THESE:

Matisse: “to theatricalize the finish. To finish with unfinish–a pictorial symbol”
“the unneatness, that freshness that refuses to go unfresh”
“a certain one-ness”
“a tickled dimensionality”

Braque: “oscillating in its stress of adhesion of units on the surface of the painting”

Van Gogh: “certain motific elements”

Monet: “wonderful rumble of pictorial information to flat projectively plastic”

Picasso: “a repeating planometric chant”

Leger: “residual echo of modernity and its imaging embedded in its dissident views”

What I wouldn’t give for a large sock o’ horse manure.

Jaret Wright had virtually nothing on Sunday night and left before the end of the second inning, having already allowed four runs to score. Not wanting to be out-sucked, Alay Soler was torched for eight runs in the third inning as the Bombers got their Bomb back and unloaded on the Mets, 16-7. Ron Villone was effective in an emergency relief call and earned the win. And whatta ya hear, whatta ya say, Alex Rodriguez was the big man hitting a grand slam and a three-run dinger, but for the Mets fan sitting next to me in the upper deck last night, the game will go down as “the Nick Green” game. Green, making his first start at second base for the Yankees led off the third inning with a walk. He would come up again later in the inning and my pal leaned over and asked, “When is the last time a .077 hitter walked twice in one inning?” We’ll never know the answer because Green plasted a two-run homer to left center. My friend, though undoubtedly discouraged, couldn’t help but laugh. The next time Green came to the plate his average was up to .100.

It was just one of those nights. Mets catcher Paul LoDuca took exception to the way Alex Rodriguez reacted after hitting his grand slam and jawed at him some after Rodriguez crossed the plate. Lighten up, Francis. I think LoDuca was just sticking up for his pitcher, and that is fine. He was upset but I don’t think Rodriguez was trying to show the Mets up and his celebration was nothing that you don’t see all the time these days. LoDuca has got a good dose of the red ass in him anyhow, which is what you like to see in your catcher. But whatever hard feelings he had, they weren’t too serious as the Mets didn’t even brush Rodriguez off the plate in the next two at bats–a single and another homer. (LoDuca is one of six Mets to make the All-Star team, while four Yankees–Rodriguez, Jeter, Cano and Mariano made it.) For Rodriguez is was a huge game and he was showered with cheers, standing o’s, the whole sh-bang.

The game was delayed about an hour due to some light rain and the first four innings moved slowly despite the excitement. The place was definitely juiced but this was going to be a typical American League sluggfest. It felt like it was going to be a long night’s journey into day and sure enough I didn’t arrive back at my crib until just after 2:00. Still, after the Bombers scored their 16th run in the fifth inning, there was not much tension left. The crowd gradually thinned-out and the last part of the game moved briskly. For Yankee fans it was the kind of anti-climax to thoroughly enjoy.

The Yankees need to win tonight’s finale to win the current series and salvage a split of their season set with the Mets. In their way stands 26-year-old Cuban defector Alay Soler. The plump righthander started the year in A-ball where he dominated in six starts, earning an early May promotion to double-A Binghamton. There he was similarly convincing in three more turns, posting an aggregate minor league line of 49 2/3 IP, 29 H, 8 R, 0 HR, 12 BB, 55 K in nine starts.

By that point, the Mets had seen more than enough of Jose Lima and punted him, calling up Soler straight from double-A. Soler has since been infinitely less impressive in his seven major league starts. Much like his fellow countryman, Friday night’s starter Orlando Hernandez, Solar’s best start came in Arizona when he pitched a two-hit shutout. Still, Soler walked three and struck out just two in that game. In that sense, the start before that in which he struck out seven Dodgers in seven innings, walking just one and allowing just one run on a solo homer was more convincing. Most recently, Soler got roughed up by the Red Sox in Fenway for eight runs on ten hits and a pair of walks in just 4 1/3 innings.

The Yankees counter with Jaret Wright, whose last two starts have produced this line: 11 IP, 8 H, 1 R, 0 HR, 6 BB, 10 K. Most encouraging there is the increased strikeout rate as Jaret had struck out just 24 in his previous 53 2/3 innings of work. Wright lasted six full in his last outing and the Yankee pen is both rested and coming off a collection of solid outings as detailed at the end of my last post. Let’s just hope the Yankees don’t come down with the URPs (Unfamiliar Rookie Pitcheritis).

As was readily apparent when the Mets put men on second and third before Randy Johnson had even thrown five pitches, yesterday, the 16th anniversary of Andy Hawkins’ 4-0 no-hit loss, just wasn’t the Yankees’ day. David Wright doubled those two runners home to give the Mets an early 2-0 lead. The Yankees would tie it up in the third after Alex Rodriguez delivered a bases-loaded single for the first run, but the tying run scored on a double play off the bat of Jorge Posada and Andy Phillips flied out to strand Jason Giambi at third with the go-ahead run.

Johnson, who had looked so good in his last three games (20 1/3 IP, 13 H, 4 R, 2 BB, 22 K), gave the lead right back and then some, following the Yankees’ aborted rally with a four-pitch walk to Wright. A Julio Franco single and a walk to Chris Woodward of all people loaded the bases and a first-pitch single to left by Ramon Castro plated Wright and Franco as Melky Cabrera’s throw tailed slightly up the first base line. After Johnson battled Eli Marrero for his second strikeout of the inning (Randy needed 13 pitches total for the two Ks), Jose Reyes delivered the third single of the inning into left field to plate Woodward as Cabrera’s throw sailed far over the head of Jorge Posada and all the way to the backstop allowing Castro and Reyes to move to second and third. Paul Lo Duca then followed with yet another single to left as both Castro and Reyes scored. That made it 7-2 Mets and a Marrero homer off Johnson in the sixth pushed it to 8-2. The eight runs off Johnson were the most he’s allowed in a single start since 2003.

Meanwhile the Yankees were busy killing every rally they mustered against Mets starter Steve Trachsel. In the bottom of the first, yet another misguided hit-and-run attempt turned a no-outs, first-and-second situation for Jason Giambi into a two-outs, man on second situation for Rodriguez when Giambi took a 3-2 pitch low and away for strike three and, with no one standing in the right-handed batters box, Johnny Damon was thrown out by ten feet on his way to third. Rodriguez walked, but Posada flied out to end the inning. As I already mentioned, Posada’s double play cut short the game-tying third-inning rally. In the seventh it was Jeter who hit into a double play with men on first and second and no outs. Giambi followed by grounding out to strand the Miguel Cairo at third.

The Yankees finally got one back in the eighth when Rodriguez, who went 2 for 3 with 2 RBIs and a walk, led off the inning with a solo homer off the disgruntled Aaron Heilman, but that was all they’d get. 8-3 Mets.

Rookies T.J. Beam and Matt Smith mopped up admirably, Smith having now thrown ten scoreless innings to start his major league career. With that, every member of the Yankee bullpen save LOOGY Mike Myers, who has yet to appear in this series, has thrown a minimum of one scoreless inning in the past two days for a collective line of 8 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 5 K. Myers, meanwhile, hasn’t allowed a run since surrendering a three-run home run to David Ortiz on May 1 and currently sports a 0.68 ERA.

Finally, I’ve just noticed that T.J. Beam’s full name is Theodore Lester Beam. Better hope he never plays on a team with David Jonathan “J.D.” Drew. These men are rebels. Together they could destroy our fragile initialing system altogether.

That is all.

It is going to be a scorcher out there today. Dude, with Steve Trachsel on the mound and McCarver and Buck on the mic, this could be a long one for everone invovled. One of the keys for the Yanks is keeping Reyes off base as they did last night. He reaches against Randy and things could get sticky. Alex Rodriguez went 0-4 last night. He just missed getting good wood on two pitches (in his second at bat, resulting in a fly ball to left, and in his final time up, resulting in a pop out in foul ground to the catcher) and heard the boo birds by the end of the night. Maybe he breaks out a can of whup ass today. In this kind of heat you’ve got to think this one will be a barn-burner. Like that crazy Matt Franco game years ago.

Hopefully, the Bombers can take another won and secure a series victory. Stay cool, y’hear.

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

Mike Mussina felt a minor strain his right groin in the first inning last night but it didn’t effect his performance on the mound. Mussina was particularly sharp and through four innings did not allow a hit. But an expected thunderstorm delayed the game for just over an hour and it was enough time to knock Mussina out of the game. He later told the New York Times:

“It’s tough; those four innings went really well,” Mussina said. “But after all these years, I know it’s a lot safer to do it the way we did it, and a lot smarter to do it the way we did it.

“Trying to get one win versus maybe costing yourself a long period of time, it’s not worth it. With what we’re trying to accomplish, it could really be detrimental. We have enough injury problems as it is.”

Mussina plans to make his next start. El Duque returned after the showers and pitched admirably, just as I hoped and expected, changing speeds beautifully. His ten-pitch strike out of Johnny Damon in the fifth was terrific (got him looking on an inside fastball at the knees). Jason Giambi hit a towering solo home run in the first and Andy Phillips singled Williams home immediately after the rain delay. It was all the runs the Yankees would need. Ron Villone pitched two scoreless innings. Even more encouraging for the Yankees was the efficient relief work from Scott Procter, Kyle Farnsworth and Mariano Rivera. All told, the Mets reached base on a walk, an error and a lone single by Endy Chavez (who was picked off of first by Villone). The Yankees won 2-0, and gained a game on Boston who lost to the Marlins.

The Mets have the best record in the National League, 3.5 games better than the Cardinals, lead their division by 11 games over the Phillies, and are two games better than the crosstown Yankees. Of course the Metropolitans play in a weaker league and a far weaker division than the Bombers. Still, when these two teams faced off in Shea Stadium in late May, they played a trio of one-run games and the Mets took the series two games to one having outscored the Yankees by a single run. It was every bit as close as that sounds, with the first two games being decided in the victor’s final at-bat and the third ending with the tying run on base.

At the time, the Yankees were at their most banged up, with Jorge Posada and Kyle Farnsworth unable to participate thus reducing the available roster to 23 men. Since then both teams have jettisoned the dead weight from their rosters (though Robinson Cano’s injury has reinstated some to the Yankees’), the Yankees releasing Scott Erickson and designating Aaron Small for assignment, the Mets designating Jose Lima, trading Jeremi Gonzalez, Kaz Matsui and Jorge Julio, and, for good measure, releasing Bartolome Fortunato, the other pitcher obtained in the Kazmir trade who, like Victor Zambrano, had been placed on the 60-day DL following Tommy John surgery.

As a result, the Mets that the Yankees will face this weekend, despite their just-concluded sweep at the hands of the streaking Red Sox, are a better team than the one the Yankees saw in May. The Mets have the second best offense in the National League, led by old Yankee-killer Carlos Delgado, 23-year-old David Wright, who is one big postseason away from rivaling Derek Jeter as the city’s biggest sports star, Carlos Beltran, who is serving up crow to his doubters daily by having the best year of his career, and Jose Reyes, who’s finally drawing walks thus becoming a weapon rather than a liability in the lead-off spot. To that tremendous core, they’ve added Jose Valentin at second base, slugging .529 in place of Kaz Matsui’s .200/.235/.269 performance, pushing Xavier Nady’s .497 slugging all the way down to the seventh spot in the order.

The Mets also have the second stingiest pitching staff in the NL, trailing only the Petco-assisted Padres. Tom Glavine, experiencing a Mussina-like resurgence, and Pedro Martinez give them a pair of Hall-of-Fame aces in the front of their rotation, both of which the Yankees will be fortunate to miss this weekend. Meanwhile the Mets bullpen has been the best in baseball, posting a staggering 3.19 ERA with only frustrated starter Aaron Heilman currently sporting an ERA above 2.80. Yes, even Darren Oliver has pitched well this year, posting a 1.02 WHIP and a 2.45 ERA as the long man in the pen.

Incidentally, I find Heilman’s to be an interesting case. Originally ticketed to be the fifth starter, he was passed over for the job by Willie Randolph in favor of rookie Brian Bannister despite a 1.59 spring ERA. As the primary set-up man in the bullpen He posted a 1.42 ERA through May 22, during which span he was twice passed over for openings in the rotation when injuries to Bannister and Victor Zambrano lead to the desperation employment of Jeremi Gonzalez and Jose Lima because Randolph claimed that Heilman had become too valuable in his role to move out of the pen. The Mets finally came to their senses, releasing Lima on May 20, but instead of relenting and moving Heilman to the rotation, where he’d both be most valuable and most happy, they reached down to double-A to promote Alay Soler. Since then, Heilman has posted an 8.66 ERA.

Tonight the Yankees send Mike Mussina, who won a tense duel against Dontrelle Willis his last time out, to the mound to face old Yankee warhorse Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez. El Duque, who last (and first) faced the Yankees as a member of the eventual World Champion White Sox last year was traded to Arizona this winter in a package for another ex-Yankee Javier Vazquez only to return to New York just days after the last meeting between these two teams in exchange for misbegotten Kris Benson trade booty Jorge Julio. Since then he’s made six starts for the Metropolitans, the best being a three-hit complete game against his ex-teammates in Phoenix and the worst being his last, when he was sent packing after surrendering six runs while getting just five outs in Toronto. Sounds about right from the fiery Cuban with the Milk Dud head. His starts are like a box of chocolates. Indeed, his style is much the same, hitters never know what they’re gonna get, how hard, or from what angle. With Moose working his Bugs Bunny change and Duque always a threat to lob in an eephus, tonight’s match-up should be a lot of fun to watch, no matter who comes out on top.

Meanwhile, for the first time since the ’80s, the Mets are threatening the Yankees’ grip on the back pages (remember, the Yanks were repeat Champions entering the 2000 World Series while the Mets were considered serial chokers). These three games could go along way toward reestablishing order should the Yankees prevail in a convincing manner. On the other hand, if the Mets take the series, clinching just their second season series victory over the Yankees in the now ten-year history of interleague play (the other coming in 2004), los nuevos Mets just might wind up painting the town orange and blue all over again.

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